• s. asia,  travel

    these friends.

    While in Orlando we got to meet up with our friends, who have spent the last three months in the U.S.  Our kids reunited as if they’d never been apart.  They return to South Asia on Wednesday and I’m sure would be grateful for your prayers.  We miss them.  

  • s. asia

    i knew target is a magical place.

    Ready for the shock of my day? I was roaming blissfully in Target this afternoon, when I saw someone distinctly familiar ahead of me.  I thought a second. Wait. I know her . . . from South Asia! What!? It was Tiffany, an American who lived in our city for her husband’s job.  We met each other at church–chasing our toddlers, sweating buckets, in the tiny, upstairs room our church rented on Sunday mornings. And yet today here we were in bright, air-conditioned Target, in shorts and t’shirts, against a backdrop of racks of bikinis on clearance.  It could not have felt more surreal. Even weirder is that her family…

  • columbia,  travel

    this week.

    We are spending this week with a couple of David’s college roommates.  We met up in Durham at Nick and Lindsay’s house.  Joshua flew in from CA, though sadly his wife, Sarah, and son, Jacob couldn’t be with him on this trip. We had two restful days in bright, muggy NC, exploring new playgrounds, coloring with sidewalk chalk, and cooking dinner together, before bringing Joshua back to SC with us for a visit.  He and David leave first thing tomorrow morning to rejoin the Dentels for Phil’s wedding weekend in Atlanta.  The fifth of the Palmetto house guys, John Leaf, is now living with his family in Southeast Asia. I…

  • s. asia

    we need prayer.

    The past two days were a little nightmarish. David got sick Friday morning, and I followed on Friday afternoon.  Not sure how it happened that we both got so sick almost simultaneously with differing things.  But by Friday night we were each laying on a sofa, shivering with fevers, nauseated, and achey. Throughout Friday night I was rushing to the bathroom and blacking out almost every time I got up.  We talked on the Vonage phone with company doctors, and they urged me to get to the hospital.  I can’t describe the dread I have of South Asian hospitals right now (no, they are not all bad; yes, I’m probably…

  • s. asia

    last breakfast.

    the very same breakfast we shared when we first met these friends in Durham, NC: scrambled eggs and Pioneer Woman cinnamon rolls little did Alison know that one year later she’d be a mango lassi-making queen just what I like to see: the men in the kitchen “portrait of a tired mommy,” by Judah Thanks for serving us, John, Alison, Joshua and Caleb! We are going to miss you more than you know.